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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728417">All Strings Attached: Baby Verse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/palettesofrenaissance/pseuds/palettesofrenaissance'>palettesofrenaissance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Spideychelle CEO AU [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adult MJ, Adult Peter Parker, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Boss/Employee Relationship, CEO, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fertility Issues, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up, Pregnancy complications, Reader-Interactive, Unplanned Pregnancy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:20:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/palettesofrenaissance/pseuds/palettesofrenaissance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>
    <b>[ Spin-off baby verse - The Spideychelle CEO AU;  CEO!Michelle and Assistant!Peter ]</b>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>After the investigation ends and everything goes back to normal. MJ and Peter's intimate relationship comes to an abrupt end due to lies. Felicia and the culprits who tried to take MJ down are arrested.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Peter has returned to working at The Bugle. He and MJ start testing the waters about trying to repair and rebuild their relationship when their once-discussed topic about having a baby comes true.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>May Parker (Spider-Man) &amp; Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Spideychelle CEO AU [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709155</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I said that wasn't the end and it isn't! this is the "watson-parker verse" or "baby verse" that takes place during the original verse of this AU. the first chapter here is taken from the original verse and serves as a jump-off point to start the baby verse.</p><p>if you want to find out the history behind mj and peter's relationship, reading the original fic on ao3 + the nsfw verse on my blog will help</p><p>this is still very much a fic that is fun exclusively on messaged prompts so keep that in mind</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I admit that throughout writing this, I have started imagining Peter to be a mix between the live action version and the Into The Spider Verse version (which may shine through, maybe idk).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Expressing jealousy isn’t something Michelle does <em>well</em>—she's tightly-clenched jaw, curled lips, and glares that incinerate from feet away and feel to sharpen with every side eye; she's empty optimism that grows increasingly bitter with every lie, every fake-smile, and she eventually gets to a point with all this where the passive aggressiveness becomes as transparent as a brick wall until the final straw and then she just doesn’t show up, distancing and ostracizing herself.</p><p>The first time it happens was in Junior year of high school: she was practically dragged off to the side and away from the small semicircle of laughing friends in order for Peter to question her—<em>the audacity</em>, she'd thought then—about why she’s been deliberately avoiding him during their school-funded trip abroad, like it wasn’t made <em>prominently clear </em>of his interests with the new student, <em>Gwen </em>fucking <em>Stacy</em>.</p><p>(She hadn't known him then; she hadn't even <em>liked</em> him in high school. Correction: she knew <em>of</em> him but she didn't <em>know</em> him then, so there was little reason to <em>like</em> Peter in high school. But she knew who Gwen was, and younger Michelle had been a more jealous Michelle. And if asked now, years later, Michelle couldn't remember.)</p><p>Likewise, because of his blatant displays of adoration towards Gwen and his inability to pick up <em>clues</em> and the most basic of hints, which resulted in his <em>missed chances </em>following that abroad trip, Peter has no place to complain when he’s introduced to Gwen's steady boyfriend years later and in college. He has no place so he settles on draping an arm around her waist or her shoulders and reminding how long they’ve been friends and as many times as he can, and he <em>“lets slip” </em>his strength during handshakes or any physical contact to her boyfriend, and he unintentionally remembers little facts Gwen mentions that her boyfriend doesn’t remember, making him look bad, and Peter’s always lying—this perpetuates into his life even these many years later with Michelle where it's all repeating again.</p><p>Peter lies and he's less clueless now but just as hesitant; he still second-guesses, double and triple checks and has anxiety-ridden pep-talks to himself. He holds secrets and tells half-truths, partial truths, has paranoia that makes him cover his tracks and interests and anything that can label him as a n<em>ormal human being</em> and not an <em>entity</em>; he lies and smiles to Michelle, draping an arm around her shoulders and then around her waist and lets the thrill of prop wedding rings get to his head and eventually his emotions.</p><p>He lies to her face, twisting the truth—Peter lies so much that he’s caught off guard when Michelle corners him in the kitchen of her condo home and demands to know <em>“</em>W<em>hat the hell is his problem; why are you lying to my face so much?”</em></p><p>Bad habits are hard to break—both know this; he and Michelle can take a page from this: jealousy, drinking, lying. Both of them are hypocrites.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/>
<hr/><p> </p><p>First impressions are a necessary evil required to perform any level of one's running jumpstart into any form of relationship, and first impressions should be handled delicately and seriously.</p><p>Peter’s always been a bit clunky at first impressions and first meetings.</p><p>Likewise, how one conducts themselves around specific persons when receiving certain information is equally important. This too, Peter could have done better.</p><p>It’s a crisp, clear day in early November when it happens and things turn for the worse than they already are: </p><p>Peter Parker is three weeks from his personally pre-scheduled date of termination when Michelle J. Watson strides out of her office, past his assistant/receptionist desk, not even <em>glancing</em> his way, and greets the tall man who has been waiting for her for the past twenty-six minutes and whom Peter has been <em>steaming</em> over in jealousy.</p><p>The man—who Peter knows <em>vaguely </em>through word-of-mouth, and who goes by the nickname “Golden Thumb” from relations on his resume and his work history to financially improve businesses—stands tall and reflexively puts a hand on the flap of his suit's jacket, the brass buttons shining and matching his designer cufflinks. Mark Raxton is his name overheard during their introduction, followed by his sickly-sweet flattery towards Cedill's CEO.</p><p>Michelle outstretches her hand in introduction, and Mark shakes it firmly before quickly kissing the back of her hand.</p><p>Several feet away, Peter scowls at this, his nose wrinkling and growing hot under the collar for negative reasons.</p><p>Michelle isn’t very impressed by the act herself but withholds an eye roll until her back is turned and they're walking back to her office—although she doesn't roll her eyes, her small grin diminishes then hardens to Mark's face at his actions.</p><p>Peter's glare darts from watching the pair from the corner of his eye then to a point in the wall as he appears to have been busy, waiting for them to approach.</p><p>He hasn’t moved from his desk since Michelle exited her office to greet Mark, the stack of papers in his hands frozen from movement. His pulse drums in his ears.</p><p>As she approaches Peter's desk, Michelle chuckles honestly at Mark's joke and then flattery and Peter’s jaw tightens, the papers crinkling in his hands.</p><p>As she holds the door open to her office, Mark is laying the compliments on <em>thick</em>. As they leave pass Peter’s desk, Mark has the <em>audacity </em>to give Peter an excited <em>thumbs up</em>, but Peter only gives a tight-lipped, flat smile in return. As soon as Mark turns, Peter is frowning again; mentally, he kicks himself for even reacting to Mark.</p><p>The meeting between the CEO and her new employee isn’t sudden, and Peter has had a good two weeks in preparation but he still hadn’t expected the man to be the <em>way</em> he is—he's as skilled and creditable and attractive as his Rolex and glossy shoes, and his <em>face.</em></p><p>A woman walking by does a double take at Mark, pauses when he smiles at the CEO, and then mouths to Peter “<em>Is that the new guy!?”</em></p><p>Peter grinds his teeth instead of replying.</p><p>Although he's had time to prepare and arrange his new schedule to accommodate their newest arrival, he still feels a punch to his confidence and at the hope of he and Michelle ever getting back together—a feat he was really grasping onto following his planned termination and some of the perpetrators of the scandal being on trial. At least, he had a <em>plan</em> before she <em>finalized</em> their relationship's end. More specifically, before <em>Mark Raxton</em> was brought into the picture.</p><p>Peter can't help but eavesdrop from his desk and overhears Mark crack a joke and Michelle’s laugh filtering out into the hall right as her door closes.</p><p>Peter’s head falls into his hands, feeling as if hell is freezing over.</p><p>He’s pulled from his self-indulging by Catherine Wells, an employee working on the same floor, who approaches his desk with a morose expression.</p><p>“I talked with Greg and I thought to come over and see how you were doing.”</p><p>Confused, Peter asks what she meant by that and what Greg told her, Peter never having much one-on-one conversation with Greg before but knowledgeable about Greg's passive aggressiveness and tendency to stretch the truth.</p><p>“He’s noticed you’ve been pretty down lately. Like, for the past couple weeks,” Catherine answers. “Since... Since, you know, you and <em>the CEO</em>...”</p><p>Peter inwardly starts to panic. “Wh-what do you mean <em>me and the CEO?</em>”</p><p>“You had a <em>crush</em> on her and she <em>rejected</em> you, didn’t she?” Catherine has never known much about verbal filters, Peter's reminded. “Isn’t that what happened? That’s what Greg told me.”</p><p>Peter sighs.</p><p>It <em>had been</em> rumored that Peter and the CEO were an <em>item</em>, but luckily not everyone seems to believe it, Catherine included. When asked about it, she simply stated that the couple would be <em>too farfetched to ever happen</em>. The wound to Peter's confidence as he overheard her will never be known but he's reminded of it today.</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what happened,” Peter lies, looking down to the wooden pencil he's twisting between both hands.</p><p>“I’m so sorry.” She rests an apologetic hand on his shoulder. “You're a great catch. And I'm sure you'll find someone worthwhile. And someone you can date in the workplace.”</p><p>Peter's returning grin is forced and dry.</p>
<hr/><p>Months ago, it was broadcasted that Michelle J. Watson <em>apparently </em>had close relations with her personal assistant but those rumors were successfully put to rest. Some still seem to believe it—those who believe it are mostly others who work in the company building, working closest with the aforementioned pair. Catherine has remained one of them but only privately.</p><p>Now it's years later and it’s a personal hell on Earth when Peter finds out Mark will be working close to the CEO, becoming a member of her personal team. And Peter <em>thinks </em>he manages a controlled face during the meeting involving him, Jasmine (Michelle’s second in command), and all the heads of the local departments. Peter <em>thinks so</em> but his grip tells otherwise.</p><p>The icing on this shit-cake is when Mark thinks it is a <em>great idea </em>to revel loudly about his newly gained job’s position, how he’s the absolute best at it and can’t be beat, about how closely he’s working with the CEO and the opportunity, and talking as if all in the room have known each other for more than the three weeks he’s been employed.</p><p>During one of Mark's boastings when he happens to be alone with Peter, in an explosive impulse, Peter snaps at Mark: “Don’t act like you know her! You have only been here for a few weeks!” </p><p>There's an attempt to deflect it but Mark fails.</p><p>“I’ve worked here and with her for <em>years</em>,” Peter adds, jealousy making his nerves run. “She isn’t what you think she is. And next time, don’t use the same <em>corny</em> lines from <em>freshman</em> year in college.”</p><p>It successfully drives an end to Mark’s gloating but after the incident and during their next team meeting, Michelle periodically glances toward Peter with <em>suspicion</em>.</p><p>Peter doesn’t like how <em>confident </em>Mark is about his place beside the CEO—even though Mark's position is temporary, until earnings are back up. Specifically, Peter doesn’t like Mark's <em>fawning</em> and <em>obedient behavior</em> or how Mark waits on her every whim.</p><p>And it isn’t even that it’s <em>Mark </em>but Peter’s afraid of the <em>impact</em>—because Michelle is intelligent, independent, and indescribably spectacular. And Mark’s...</p><p>Well, Mark is the exact kind of tall, dark skinned, and handsome that makes Peter’s eyes roll, makes him suspicious, makes him sneer and bristle and defensive. It makes him <em>worry</em>—about his notability, about his authority, security, about his <em>relationship</em> and <em>significance</em> in Michelle’s life.</p><p>It has <em>everything</em> to do with Mark.</p>
<hr/><p>Throughout the next week it is absolute hell.</p><p>When Peter is in the same room as both Michelle and Mark, there’s a defensive <em>shift </em>in his posture, a <em>sharpness </em>in his eyes, a tad more <em>sting </em>lacing Peter’s words, and extra strength in his handshakes. And he sidesteps a little closer to Michelle when Mark criticizes or answers with sarcasm. In privacy, Peter gives sarcastic or knowingly <em>wrong </em>advice when asked. All the while, Peter avoids directly facing Michelle while trying to talk with her in order to ask to reconsider the status of their relationship, the end driven by fear of safety and suspicion of trust and truth.</p>
<hr/><p>The candles added to this already undesirable cake is Michelle confronting Peter the following week.</p><p>Through strained painted lips, she simply tells that she knows Peter has been hostile towards their newest member but she isn’t going to ask <em>why</em> because she already suspects the correct answer. She doesn’t <em>want</em> to interact more than necessary in fear of things failing to be <em>professional</em> once again.</p><p>Peter denies that he’s been hostile towards Mark Raxon.</p><p>Michelle objects, retelling the events of how Peter has recently become absolutely <em>no help</em> to quoting Mark's questions which Peter purposely sabotaged, but Peter doing an award-winning job when <em>she </em>asks him the same questions.</p><p>Peter denies further but Michelle sees through his jealous bullshit and tells he can’t pick sides, that work is a team effort.</p><p>He’s never been on a side, he tells.</p><p>“Don’t bullshit me, Peter. We’re not discussing that. Not here, not now.” Because of this, she's going to make an excuse to leave her office again in order to clear her head, he knows.</p><p>“I’ve always been on <em>your</em> side. With <em>everything</em>.”</p><p>“No, no more, alright? Don’t do this again,” her voice noticeably cracks before she orders him out.</p><p>To a levelheaded person, Mark wouldn’t pose much of a threat, supposedly. But because Michelle and Peter have been together for <em>years</em>, a new face in the fresh wake of their break up wouldn’t throw a wrench in their plans.</p><p>Not a <em>large </em>wrench, it’s hoped.</p><p>But noticing the increasing amounts of time Mark and Michelle are spending together increases worry from Peter. He’s self-conscious and second-guessing everything and he’s... He’s not doing well.</p><p>When he’s leaving the office late one night, he miraculously leaves <em>at the same time</em> as Michelle is, and has the opportunity to discuss the overhanging cloud of emotions felt and left unsaid. But before he can, he’s phoned by his journalism boss with a confirmation to terminate his assistant job under the CEO.</p><p>He never truly talks about it with Michelle.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It's now three weeks later and the dreaded end has come.</p><p>Jasmine informs her first, of course, hearing the news drifting on the wind and vibes that screamed louder than her morning alarm. The news next came from Mark, Michelle's newest employee whose job is to work closely beside her (and who unintentionally caused much jealousy), spoken as a roll-off-the-shoulder comment before Michelle gets the notice herself—which appears on her desk two days later, typed out on yellowed resume paper.<em> Something </em>about all of this, she just <em>doesn’t like</em>; something about all this just doesn’t feel <em>right</em> to her.</p><p>So, late one night Michelle approaches Peter's desk conveniently at the time he’s finished packing his things for the day. His desk is nearly empty now, having emptying it a little each day, she assumes. He can’t even look her in the eyes.</p><p>“I know you’re leaving, but...” Each word drops heavily in the empty space, naturally echoing off the walls but reverberating in a place deeper within herself.</p><p>She’s answered with a partial whisper, partially rushed, “Yeah—uh—everything’s finished here so there’s no reason for me to <em>stay</em>.”</p><p>She impulsively follows it with: “No reason…that’s not true, Peter.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Peter inadvertently, unexpectedly sees Michelle with Mark approximately two months and eleven days after their split—but not like he's counting, certainly not—while out on a late evening, using a coverage of a political speech at town hall as an excuse to avoid his persistent neighbor, Ursula, and her overcooked homemade cookies that are always <em>too sweet </em>for his taste buds but Peter never has the heart to tell her.</p><p>On this two month and thirtieth day mark, Peter is heartstrings and terribly shielding himself in the freezing mid-heavy rain, doing his best to ignore the water soaking through the newspapers over his head, and all his energy having been drained and his mood <em>plummets </em>along with his heart to his shoes as he catches Michelle standing across the busy street, outside in the rain with arms around herself, dressed in a little black dress, and then Mark comes rushing outside with an umbrella he shields her with.</p><p>Even though he’s sure neither sees him between the speeding cars and trucks, Peter watches from afar as Mark leads Michelle to an awaiting Lyft, opens the door for her, and doesn’t wait until she’s fully inside or having closed the door before he’s dashing to the other passenger seat and getting inside himself.</p><p>Peter is certain neither sees him, but that just makes the pain <em>that</em> much worse.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Michelle shares that she's pregnant and Peter chokes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <b>
    <br/>
    <i>Chapter prompt: BABIES!!! Peter and MJ (understandably) freak out and argue, Peter decides to show his support after he talks to Aunt May and she hands him his old baby blanket</i>
    <br/>
  </b>
</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <b>Chapters and story are driven by prompts sent to my Tumblr writing blog. These chapters are rearranged to be in timeline order.</b>
  <br/>
  <i>also i am bad at chapter titles; please forgive me</i>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the afternoon that Michelle invites Peter to sit down at an unreasonably expensive restaurant with an extensively long wait-list and a five-star reputation streak, it’s six weeks after her return from an out-of-state meeting, three months since their break up and he's returned to working at The Bugle, and the <em>very last thing</em> he expects her to say in less than three minutes into their complementary basket of toasted bread—as he's chewing on half a piece, albeit—is of her to blurt, “Remember that conversation we had about children once? Well, I’m pregnant.”</p><p>“I don’t remember it being much of a conversation,” Peter finally coughs out after recovering from dislodging the dry hunk of bread in his throat. He gulps half the water from his glass, eyes still tearing, and red-faced. “It was more of me bringing up the idea as, like," and he loudly coughs; Michelle keeps her cool and doesn't look to the curious and rude glances directed at their table, “a cautionary outcome,” he finishes. “And then lots of freaking out.” He coughs again, quieter. “I recall.” He rubs his chest, regaining his breath and getting the last coughs out of his system.</p><p>“It was <em>concern,</em>” she adamantly, sternly corrects.</p><p>“You’re right; that’s putting it nicely. You going on a tangent about how full your planner is backed up for the next<em> three years, </em>then staring in your bathroom mirror like you’ve <em>now </em>gotten your midlife crisis, and then the multiple test sticks and plan B pills—if that wasn’t you <em>freaking out</em> over the concern.”</p><p>There's clearly bitterness and hurt emotions hanging on their words still.</p><p>Michelle squints in a judgmental manner. “That’s not how midlife crisis’s works.” She always has to have the last word.</p><p>“Bottom line,” Peter waves, his coughing coming to a stop. “Are you,” coughs one last time, “are you <em>really?” </em></p><p>She swirls her water glass lazily, taking her time as if this life-altering subject is the appropriate conversation opener over what could have been mistaken as an otherwise romantic dinner.</p><p>“Do you mean am I going going through a midlife crisis or am I truly pregnant? Because if it’s the first, I already went through that crisis at 28.” Takes a patient sip of her citrus-infused ice water. “And for the second, yeah, if the multiple little tests and bloated-feeling tell.”</p><p>Peter stares with his mouth partially open, unknowing what to say beside a short, “Oh.”</p><p>As it starts to sink in, he asks, “How…how along are you?”</p><p>“Not very,” she answers simply.</p><p>Then it dawns on him: “Is this why you asked me here?”</p><p>She admits it is, but also because the food is amazingly high priced for a reason and she’s been craving it since she’s been away for business.</p><p>Peter continues to stare and silence falls over their small two-seated table.</p><p>He can’t deny that she looks marvelous in the dim lighting and dressed up, but Peter is still lagging behind in processing the events within the oast couple of months. He’s still mentally weeks behind—lagging months ago when he was rumored to have gone missing at the same time the red-suited Spider-Man made another rare guest appearance and was consequently held hostage on a ship headed for outer space and, led by several super-powered metahumans currently carrying the Sinister Six title. Sneaking aboard had been a ridiculous, reckless decision that very nearly claimed his life—he'd been self-destructive, claimed the new local spider-superheroes were too young to handle, and had gone ahead without waiting for backup.</p><p>After, Peter still gets headaches periodically resulting from the event. His left calf pains occasionally from where a metal rod penetrated.</p><p>None of this he will ever tell Michelle. To her, his only bother is that he’s still lagging onto the period when they separated—not that it’s <em>not </em>true either, and that their breakup <em>could have </em>been the backseat motivator for his recent reckless decisions.</p><p>Peter doesn’t reveal a lot about what has been happening in his life. Which is why Michelle's brows pull together in confusion when he asks, “Is…is it…whose is it?”</p><p>For the first time in their dinner, she frowns. “It’s only been a few months, Peter.”</p><p>He looks at the polished silverware glistening in the low lighting. The tablecloth looks more expensive than his living room furniture. Somewhere off, a live violinist softly plays.</p><p>“Since we’ve been broken up I just <em>assumed</em>…”</p><p>“What did you assume?”</p><p>He shakes his head. “But that guy, Mark. Seemed like you both <em>clicked</em>. I thought, you know, that you two—”</p><p>“You’ve been the only man I’ve been with since those months ago.”</p><p>Seeing through tunnel vision but not feeling nearly as sure as she’s appearing, Peter’s gaze follows the ice dancing inside his half-empty glass. He’s afraid of her answer but asks anyway: “are you two together?”</p><p>He’s careful with his words, knowing how she is about <em>relationships </em>and that she doesn’t fall into them lightly, nor carry the title without care.</p><p>The waiter decides to materialize at that moment and asks for their orders. Michelle insists on waiting in order to get a large serving of a meat-based entreé, and orders a salad decorated in almonds, bite-sized fruits, and two kinds of cheese. Peter tells that remaining with his water is just fine, and when receiving a skeptical look from his former lover, waves at Michelle that he’s fine. Perfectly fine. Of course.</p><p>“What have you been up to?” Bread crinkles between her fingers and crumbs fall to her plate as she breaks off a piece.</p><p>Peter’s confused by her question—typical small talk feels out of place with the current topic on the table and their history. “I’ve been…busy. With work. Um, why—exactly?”</p><p>She shrugs; just trying conversation is her excuse.</p><p>Peter admits that he’s still confused about the situation and her question because they’re still working on the <em>independent</em> and <em>separation</em> part of their post-breakup, struggling to remain cordial and unfamiliar in public after everything hit the ceiling fan and certain private details came to light.</p><p>Obviously they're failing.</p><p>It's a lot easier to speak about putting a five-year relationship behind one's back compared to actually doing it.</p><p>At the table in the expensive and exclusive resteraunt, Peter admits that he isn’t fully confident about what she has entail for tonight. In reality, he’s unsure how much to throw himself in this time, still healing over the open wound of their split (and this too is shown in his earlier wording).</p><p>“That’s fair.”</p><p>Her eyes drop to her hands and he catches that she’s wearing the wedding ring given when he decided he wanted to marry. He watches with drying mouth and sinking heart as she works it off her finger.</p><p>“About me being…you know. I just wanted to let you know—”</p><p>“Why,” comes out without thinking, watching with dread as the ring is placed beside her empty plate.</p><p>“It’s only fair.” She means about the potential child. “I thought you should know—”</p><p>“Michelle,” is a whispered, dry-mouthed squeak of a plea.</p><p>“—And I haven’t decided what I wanted to do. I’m still in the first trimester so my options are still up in the air.”</p><p>“Michelle, please.” It’s the same plea he gave when they separated and then during a chance-encounter a week after.</p><p>“I didn’t ask you here for your opinion.”</p><p>She reminds that she does still remember what happened after the baby scare once before during her poorly labeled ‘midlife crisis’: that Peter had clearly succumbed to baby fever but Michelle was more hesitant, more wary to go along with it. And why: though it was never voiced in words, because of understandable fear of various properties.</p><p>At their small dinner table in the mood lighting of the high-priced restaurant, Peter sits in silence, knowing he can do no more than accept it all. Hands run through his hair. He’s still bothered and nervous despite aware that he’s limited.</p><p>Michelle’s salad arrives then. She doesn’t begin eating right away.</p><p>“I’m not going to freak out about it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had plenty of time while on that business trip and there was a spa there too, so that helped a little bit.”</p><p>She doesn’t tell that she also ran into a licensed therapist at that spa who gave her number, which is also who Michelle met Mark through.</p><p>“I guess,” she tries, struggles to find the words that doesn’t blatantly lay out her feelings. A finger runs around the circumference of the ring—it isn’t a secret she’s really fond of it. “I guess I wanted to see if you were still—”</p><p>“This is a lot,” he sighs, and in that same moment his phone rings.</p><p>It’s coincidental: that he fumbles with the volume, foolishly leaves it screen-side-up on the table. And it's fitting because Michelle reads <em>Cat </em>as the caller ID. She sees the missed four calls from <em>Cat</em>. And to her, the ring on the tablecloth suddenly doesn’t seem like such a regrettable idea to leave it there.</p><p>“You still talk to her?” Her chin juts, head tilting, but Peter plays oblivious. “<em>Cat? </em>You're—<em>she’s </em>the one who you<em>— </em>”</p><p>Peter tries to cover up the screen with his sleeve, his palm, clicks it off while spouting denials. “What!? No! No, no! We haven’t talked since—we <em>don’t talk</em>, ‘Chelle! It’s just a stupid thing—”</p><p>But she isn’t having it. “<em>Talked since?</em>” She wants to get upset, she wants to be <em>angry </em>, wants to throw her water in his face, toss the basket of bread, flip the table and exclaim that she’s known all along—she wants to visibly demonstrate her disappointment and betrayal and in feeling like a <em>fool, </em>but of course she doesn’t. Michelle continues to keep her calm exterior and keeps her emotions from emerging by waving both hands and stating that she’s done.</p><p>“Michelle—”</p><p>“This was a mistake. All of this was a goddamn cursed mistake.” Swallowing thickly, she flags down a wayward waitress and calmly demands for the check and a glass of Dom Perignon.</p><p>Peter stares incredulously as she leans up to smooth her clothes unnecessarily, rummages through her bag, and as their waiter returns with her main course he blurts out his thought.</p><p>“You’re not serious…”</p><p>She looks everywhere but at him. The waiter returns carrying the bottle of champagne and pours Michelle an over-full glass per demand. She thanks him quietly with a well-mannered shark-y smile.</p><p>“You’re <em>pregnant</em>,” Peter hisses loud enough for it to be heard, for the waiter to shoot Michelle a glance and a nearby table to look over at her holding the glass in hand.</p><p>The table’s atmosphere becomes congested. Michelle glares back, tossing around possible rebukes or sarcastic jibes in her mind. Ultimately sighing without a clever comeback, she places her glasses down and repeats, “I think we’re done here.”</p><p>The man seated across from her sputters so Michelle finishes before he gathers his words for another excuse she isn’t sure she can take.</p><p>“You obviously have other plans, another life—<em>a third one</em>—and I’m not going to get in your way. You’ve been occupied, because you’ve <em>obviously moved on.</em>” She’s cutting violently, unnecessarily into her dinner. “I was a fool to ask you here and expect something different.”</p><p>Peter denies her accusations by telling that he <em>hasn’t </em>been busy, that the phone call <em>wasn’t</em> important. He tells that he’ll turn his attention to the topic at hand and ignore his phone <em>completely</em>. But Michelle no longer believes him anyway, knowing that too is a lie, spoken in wounded desperation typical to following a breakup.</p><p>“No. Your <em>hero </em>job is very important and time consuming, so there’s no way I’m going to ask you to quit it. I’m going to do this on my own—whatever I decide. I won’t ask anything from you either, so you don’t need to feel responsible.”</p><p>“I can do this.” But he isn’t enthusiastic about it; it's spoken like he feels <em>obligated</em> and it’s very noticeable. He isn’t genuine. He isn’t confident.</p><p>“Well that’s rather hard to believe with your track record, isn’t it?”</p><p>It’s known that Michelle isn’t one to be handled lightly—she’s beaten and clawed and fought her way to the top, where she is now—and she handles everything with high expectations, holds everyone around her with equally stern resolve. She would rather hurt herself a little bit if that avoids being hurt greatly in the long run. She treats her relationships the same way. It has been both a downfall and safety net in the past.</p><p>She thinks this time it all will end the same way when Peter is left at a lost for words, unable to think of a comeback in the moment, then eventually gathers himself and leaves.</p><p>In light of the heated emotions given more into angered and frustrated facial emotions and demeanors, Michelle thinks this is the last she’s going to see of Peter Parker, so she brings the glass of champagne to her lips because she needs a release of this stress and bring her nerves back down, but she pauses. Around her, adults dressed in similarly expensively pressed clothing chat, eat, and drink, and do a successful job acting as if the little <em>episode </em>at her table hadn’t happened.</p><p>Michelle looks at an older woman the table over drinking white wine. Michelle looks at her glass. She never takes a sip.</p><p>She asks for her meal to-go, journeys home, and guzzles down soda instead while reading one of those books written by people who became successful after a one-hit-wonder; it’s a book about about meditation and <em>becoming your best self, </em>a last minute gift received at a family gift exchange a summer ago.</p><p>Michelle expects that’s going to be the last she’s to see of Peter Parker. She thinks about phoning that therapist met at the spa and to book an appointment. She thinks about Peter and their breakup. She thinks about Mark.</p><hr/><p>May Parker takes the news with as much equal grace as she she can muster—which is to do everything but outright <em>curse</em> her nephew, gives a <em>disappointed </em>look and the <em>you could do better </em>sigh and <em>how could you be so stupid</em> groan as she thinks of a not-crushing way to counter Peter’s understandably high emotions about his previous boss and lover, Michelle J. Watson. May gives her two-cents, saying "How <em>could she?</em>" About what Michelle <em>should</em> do, and what Peter <em>ought to do</em>, and about that glass of champagne.</p><p>May gets Peter to finally sit on the couch. She's visiting, staying in his small apartment for the duration, and didn’t expect to deal with her nephew’s tight-set jaw about the woman he’s been gushing full-strengthed over for the past two years—three years now counting the full time, up until their breakup (which May admits to see it coming a mile away after hearing when Michelle found out about Spider-Man; May predicted it solely judging by Michelle's ghosting Peter for weeks following)—and whom Peter had intended to marry.</p><p><em>Had</em>: the keyword.</p><p>Peter holds her abandoned proposal ring in a trembling fist.</p><p>May places a hand across his shoulders. Peter's head hangs, shoulders tied to twin weights measuring tons.</p><p>“I won’t press but I’m here if you need anything,” she speaks into his hair, arm bringing him in for a side hug.</p><p>After several silent minutes, Peter blurts the missing key bit of information from the story he retold earlier: “Michelle’s pregnant.”</p><p>May’s eyes widen. She leans back to stare in shock as he simply affirms her thoughts with a tired, “Yeah.”</p><p>“Wow,” she breathes.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Oh.” She pauses. “Is it yours?”</p><p>“From what she says she hasn’t been with anyone since we broke up.”</p><p>“Wow…”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“...I’m gonna be a grandma… That’s wonderful! Also you’ve finally made me an old woman!”</p><p>“Aunt May.” He’s serious despite her joking.</p><p>Time is needed for her to process the information of the pieces—that the two aren’t even married yet. That they are no longer engaged or working together. That she’s going to be a <em>grandmother </em>or <em>great-aunt </em>or <em>whatever </em>the title is. That her nephew who used to be a <em>literal superhero </em>is about to have a <em>kid</em> of his own: a <em>super-baby? </em>A <em>super infant? </em>A <em>super…insect-kid? </em>A <em>super… </em></p><p>“How do you feel about all of this? I mean, I know about <em>Michelle—</em>I mean about the <em>whole situation?</em>”</p><p>“She said it’s officially over.”</p><p>May quietly sighs.</p><p>“I…dont think…” His laced fingers press to his mouth. “I don’t think I could do it,” he admits for the first time that evening. “What if she was right? What if the guy who’s Spider-Man isn’t…<em>good </em>for this? She’s not the first person to say that Spider-Man would ruin relationships. This isn't the first time it <em>has</em> ruined my relationships. But I dunno.” He shrugs. “I just thought…”</p><p>“Peter…”</p><p>“There was Gwen and then there was Carlie and Cissy, but I always thought that<em> wouldn’t be it with everyone</em>…”</p><p>“Peter—”</p><p>“Do you think I really messed this up beyond repair?”</p><p>“If you give me a chance to say something I’ll tell you what I think.”</p><p>He shamefully apologies and promises to not speak again until she’s finished. So, May shifts on the sofa to face him, presses her palms together, thinking before she speaks, and decides to lay it all down, point-blank: “No, I <em>don’t </em>think you can do all of this.”</p><p>His mouth hangs, offended, like he’s readying to object (wasn’t she supposed to be on his side?) but catches himself from speaking.</p><p>May clarifies: “Not if you’re not committed. From what it sounds like, Michelle doesn’t want you around because she doesn’t think you would be committed to being with her.” He’s ready to object again but May adds, “You were at dinner with your <em>ex-fiancé, </em>now-<em>mother-of-your-child, </em>and answering messages from a <em>woman </em>she’s long suspected you’ve been seeing in your spare time.”</p><p>Peter’s mouth closes. Well, when she puts it like that…</p><p>“But we <em>aren’t </em>together, me and Cat!”</p><p>“Doesn’t matter. She’s long suspected that anyway and tonight doesn't help cleared that up in your favor. To Michelle, you’re not committed and it feels like she’s secondary in your life, so she doesn’t want you around.” She gazes appointedly at his hand enclosing the abandoned ring.</p><p>Under his breath, Peter curses that he’s been so stupid. “What should I do,” he asks, because he doesn’t know. He wants to be happy about the news tonight but he feels as if whichever decision he chooses he’ll be letting <em>someone </em>down.</p><p>“What do <em>you </em>think you should do?”</p><p>He shrugs. “Everything.”</p><p>May nods, the temples of her eyeglasses are stretched from routinely resting on top her head.  “When me and Ben got you, <em>never </em>could we have ever guessed how much you would be the passionate, kind man you’ve become. And we’re both <em>so proud </em>of you for that and all you’ve done and the people you’ve helped. But there <em>has</em> to be people you care to <em>put first</em>.” He knows, but for emphasis because May isn’t sure he <em>knows</em>, she adds, “Beyond me, Ned, and your friends. Particularly your possibly extending family.”</p><p>Peter nods.</p><p>May follows his gaze to his hand cradling the engagement ring she remembers him bringing to her after weeks of talking, consideration, and final decision. “Do you love her?”</p><p><em>“So much</em>,” he goes.</p><p>“Would you stay with her? Like, if she agreed to marry you?”</p><p><em>“Indefinitely</em>.”</p><p>“Then cut the bullshit and excuses! You’ve never been a good liar!” With a hand on her hip, she cuts down her nephew’s self-loathing attitude with a hard hand she hasn’t brought out in years—and <em>literally</em>, twice slapping his shoulder in discipline.</p><p>Peter thinks she’s leaving the room at the end of the conversation. For the next two minutes, Peter is left alone with his thoughts as May searches through his hallway closet. A small blanket is in her hands when she returns—it used to be his, she tells, brought over with the rest of his belonging when he was placed under her and Ben’s custody. She snuck it into his apartment during a visit years ago and hid it in his hallway closet as a <em>just in case </em>for whatever situation that may arise to need this. She suspects now is perfect as any to bring it out.</p><p>“I can’t make the decision for you and I’m not going to try. But you do have a lot to consider, need to sort everything out and prioritize.”</p><p>She then lists his responsibilities and emphasizes his current busy lifestyle: his career as a full-time journalist and photographer, the few remaining court dates he’s to attend about the company scandal, and picking back up making Spider-Man guest appearances again. She’s just short of saying his plate is overflowing.</p><p>The blanket is appropriately small with stripes along the edges. It’s folded across his arms that are hanging across his knees.</p><p>“Knowing you, multitasking is a skill you’re still developing at. Raising a kid is a full time job…and <em>you </em>weren’t an easy cookie to take care of yourself.” She smiles, gives a small chuckle but it dies with Peter not reciprocating her attempt to elevate the mood.</p><p>He turns his stare from the blanket to a random point in front of him. Not all at once.</p><p>Rubbing his back, May continues. “It’s a big decision. And it <em>can </em>be scary at times—don’t listen to people who tell you otherwise.”</p><p>Peter’s silence makes the apartment feel emptier than it currently is.</p><p>“I’m not going to tell you what to do, but whatever you chose, you’re going to be great at it.” She gives his back a departing pat and tells that she’s going to retire to bed, hoping it gives him the privacy and space to soak in her advice.</p><p>Outside within the city, a bus roars by. A motorcycle revs and a pedestrian shouts. Somewhere in his apartment building, a resident is baking cookies, Peter smells, and someone else on another floor is watching television with the sound too loud. His nextdoor neighbor left, locking their cat inside for once. The engagement ring feels weighted against his palm.</p><p>As soon as he hears the door click closed after May and the lock turn in place, Peter closes his eyes and raises the hospital blanket to press his face into.</p><p>He does think about May’s words. He also thinks about those he’s mentored and who he used to look up to. He thinks about Mark and he thinks about the memories behind the engagement ring. He thinks about Michelle, and the future.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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    <i>if you want to find out the history behind mj and peter's relationship, reading the original fic on ao3 + the nsfw verse on my blog will help. and like always, feel free to message me about anything- questions, concerns, things you liked or didn't like.</i>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <b><br/><i>comments are the only thing that lets me know your thoughts and I am always happy to listen!</i><br/></b></p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Michelle's first pregnancy and Peter's heart in his hands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <b>Chapter prompt: I’m scared, what happens next? What does peter say to Michelle, and how does she react? Whose cat? What happens to the baby? You’re such a good writer but damn you left us hanging</b>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <i>i do want to warn that I have not ever shied away from writing heavy real life scenarios. and such are in this AU, specifically this chapter and the following chapter.</i>
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<p>  <i>so this chapter gets sad. really, really sad. there’s no happy in this chapter, just a warning</i></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
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<p>The room is cold, both in temperature and the sterilized surfaces.</p>
<p>A pointillism painting hangs on the wall across from the reclining patient chair; the picture is simple: a scenic view of a clear summer day, a red-roofed one-story house, a bright blue lake in the background. On the wall just to Michelle's left is a long vertical piece colored in earth tones and abstract shapes she can’t quite make out; it’s clearly store-purchased.</p>
<p>Michelle continues waiting patiently, fingers entwined across her bloated stomach, and lets out a deep sigh, spacing out into the lights above.</p>
<p>Finally, the door opens for a woman in flared pants and a calm greeting smile. She’s got her hair pulled back in a bun; she’s recently gotten a new cut style for her bangs. She greets Michelle by last name and asks how her days have been.</p>
<p>“You were still feeling some morning sickness last time you came in. Do you still have it? Have things gotten better?”</p>
<p>Michelle adjusts atop the paper covering the patient chair and grunts in answer. “It left about three weeks ago but I’m already feeling like my face is fatter and that I’m sweating more.” Her fingers message her cheeks in large circles. “I thought this wasn’t supposed to hit until weeks later,” she groans.</p>
<p>“Well to be fair, you’ve passed the first trimester weeks ago,” her doctor chuckles but Michelle sits up on her elbows in alarm.</p>
<p>She hadn’t realized it’s been that long already.</p>
<p>Her doctor nods, and adds: “Do you want to see whether the little bun’s a boy or girl? Or would you rather wait some more?”</p>
<p>Michelle takes a few minutes to think about it, then mutters out loud at low volume.</p>
<p>Since first finding out about her unexpected package, Michelle has been contemplating a plate-full of options—about her career, about her current lifestyle, her livelihood, about her own personal capability about her new parental role. During her last doctor visit five weeks ago—because she missed the follow-up between then and now—she began weighing and considering her options, and whether she even <em> wanted </em> to get to know what was beginning to grow inside her. And it’s only after some soul-searching and acceptance in personal ability, she willed herself to return to her doctor with the decision she <em>does</em> want to get to know it.</p>
<p>To her doctor, Michelle simply nods in answer and lifts her shirt to her bra’s underwire.</p>
<p>The woman asks, just to make sure, about the options Michelle had been considering during their last visit.</p>
<p>Michelle tells that she’s decided to keep it.</p>
<p>And she’s grateful she only receives a nod and no further questions.</p>
<p>Michelle is nervous as she watches clear gel squeezed from a tube and dreads the cold skin contact.</p>
<p>“How have you been feeling,” Michelle is asked. “You know, besides the waning sickness.”</p>
<p>“Ugh,” is the answer she gets. “Better. I suppose. If this is better.”</p>
<p>Her doctor chuckles.</p>
<p>The gel is applied; Michelle still jolts and shivers, complaining about the cold temperature in a hiss.</p>
<p>“It isn’t too bad,” Michelle sighs in answer to the question.</p>
<p>Her doctor is an woman not too much older than Michelle. She thinks the doctor might be around the age of Michelle's own parents.</p>
<p>“I remember my first one,” her doctor speaks, wistfully, pulling out a device and prepares to roll it around Michelle’s small bump within her stomach.</p>
<p>Michelle asks <em>how many</em>.</p>
<p>“Two. One’s two years old. The other’s turning six in a month.”</p>
<p>Michelle gives a low noise of admiration and her head lowers to the cushioned table.</p>
<p>Both women sit in comfortable silence as the device rolls around the patient's stomach, the doctor searching for a clear view of her Michelle's womb. On a computer monitor, Michelle’s slowly starting to make out the blurry shapes coming into view.</p>
<p>The silence is broken with an innocent, “Just you today?”</p>
<p>The echoing, hollow heartbeat on the speakers pick up Michelle's at that moment, the skip in beats giving her away. “Yup! Like always…” A smile tries to show. It doesn’t at all.</p>
<p>“No daddy?”</p>
<p>“It’s complicated.” Michelle’s head rolls to the other side of the table to stare at the wall.</p>
<p>The doctor hums in understanding. “Heard that before. I’ve said it myself before…”</p>
<p>Suddenly curious, Michelle asks what she meant.</p>
<p>“My kids’ father has a job where his life was constantly at risk. I always feared that one day I would get the call and he'd...wouldn’t come back.”</p>
<p>Michelle mutters that she can relate, then, turning her head back for conversation, asks her doctor what her husband’s profession had been.</p>
<p>“A firefighter. He still is one. And, yeah, it’s part of the job description—I know—but that wasn’t the problem. He’s very generous and is the sweetest person and he’s <em> good </em> at his job...but it got to a point where it was like he didn’t have an <em> off switch</em>. ...And it got so bad that when he was home, he would find things to do for adrenaline. And he used to run me <em> up the wall</em>.” She laughs but it's more for comfort, more for the nostalgia.</p>
<p>“What did you do?” Michelle is suddenly very interested.</p>
<p>“Saw a marriage counselor,” she answers, wrist coming to a stop on Michelle’s stomach, the fetus's heartbeat now the focus of the speakers. “When you get a call because your husband is in the hospital for a <em> dumb </em> reason such as trying to fix the satellite dish on the roof in the rain and then <em> slipping and falling</em>...” She chuckles at the memory; it quickly dies out. “We had to talk out rules for when he’s home. Things grew <em> too different </em> when he was here after his tendencies started.”</p>
<p>A pause is shared.</p>
<p>“What does <em> he </em> do? You said he has a dangerous job, too.”</p>
<p>“Reporting.” Then Michelle laughs because it was the partial truth. “It’s a really dangerous job at times, I swear! People chase him and he’s gotten so many death treats…” She smiles along with her doctor. Asks, “What did you two ended up doing? After the counselor, I mean. Did it work out?”</p>
<p>The doctor heaves a deep sigh. “We’ve been divorced for three years.”</p>
<p>“Oh…”</p>
<p>“We still communicate often,” she tries to perk up. “And he still visits and is still very enthusiastic and involved with the kids. But, you know, there’s a point in some people’s lives where they have to do what’s best for <em>themselves</em>.” As a second thought and as if sensing her patient’s mood, adds, “But everything still worked out. Everything will work out.”</p>
<p>Michelle only nods, feeling her doctor’s hand begin moving again. The patient room grows mostly quiet once more—except for the sounds of the machines, her doctor’s lighter-themed occasional chatter, and the heartbeat from the monitor.</p>
<p>For the remainder of her appointment, Michelle learns to make out the glob of cells that will become her child.</p><hr/>
<p>She misses Peter’s visit three days later by the cause of bad timing.</p>
<p>Each day, he comes to her apartment building’s front doorstep and waits with a different flower picked from a neighbor’s outside garden, with a tight chest and heart in his hands. He waits until a neighbor admits the woman he’s waiting for has already gone and that she hasn't been returning until the early hours of the next morning.</p>
<p>Still, each morning and evening for the next four days he visits her home. He receives looks and whispered suspicions from the lawn maintenance employees and the condo neighbor who make up stories and try to guess the business for his visits. And, after he leaves, they try to make mental notes to inform Ms. Watson of the sixth floor that she’s been receiving a visitor, but the message is always forgotten before it’s passed on to the person working the next shift.</p>
<p>On the fifth day, Spider-Man is forced to fight a deranged Scorpion causing mass hysteria and violence in the city. People in radius fall in immense danger and threat. Some lose their lives; most are seriously injured by the crossfire. Its coverage by the news runs nonstop until even the crews’ lives become too endangered to get involved. It takes two whole days and nights to defeat the villain and then four more days to recover from injuries and lost rest.</p><hr/>
<p>It’s been nearly three weeks since Peter was given a heart-to-heart by his aunt, May, following the event of him abandoning Michelle at an expensive dinner after seeing her for the first time in months. Since, he’s been calling her number for four days in a row—while he was recovering from Scorpion—and just like during the first month of their breakup, she doesn’t answer. He tries not to call her too many times. He tries even harder to not leave a voicemail message.</p><hr/>
<p>It’s a week and four more days later. Eight days prior he stopped coming to her condo home hoping to intercept her hectic schedule.</p>
<p>This time he visits her office building instead. He’s more persistent than ever, entering the first floor and lobby and demanding to speak to the CEO. And after given looks—from his bandaged arms and nose, and his semi-formal attire because he’s just left work at The Bugle—he’s denied and threatened refused entry for the rest of that day.</p>
<p>He comes back the next day and assures he recently terminated his assistant position but is told the said position has already been filled. Peter tells he isn’t interested in getting his job back but is turned away by the desk manager.</p>
<p>He comes back the following day and bypasses the desk altogether and hurries to the elevators. By coincidence, he’s regrettably stopped by a security guard he befriended while on the job.</p>
<p>By the fifth day straight, the desk manager is greatly considering requesting a restraining order—it wasn’t unheard of for CEOs to receive death threats, and this city is crazy, not to mention that Ms. Watson was greatly endangered just days ago in the Scorpion attack.</p>
<p>Peter doesn’t return on day six. But on day seven, he dresses the most formal he can, hoping this time he will blend in, carries an empty briefcase with him and is successful in riding the elevators to the topmost floor, unsuspected. He ignores the few double takes and stares form former co-workers.</p>
<p>He runs into his replacement first—a girl who doesn’t look older than twenty-two—slowing down in surprise and finds his voice and asks if the CEO is free at the moment.</p>
<p>Peter runs into Jasmine Freeman next—the second in command to the CEO—and she stops in her tracks, the thick folders she’s flipping through suddenly forgotten with a mixture of shock, confusion, and curiosity flashing across her face.</p>
<p>“What a pleasant but <em> unexpected </em> surprise to see you again, <em>Mr. Parker</em>…” She squints, asks what his business is here, if he needs <em>help</em> with <em>something</em>.</p>
<p>But he’s frantically waving in a decline answer, gripping the handle of his briefcase protectively, hurriedly moving towards the closed door of the CEO’s office.</p>
<p>Jasmine Freeman doesn’t try to stop him, and just watches and waits as he approaches and raises a fist, hesitates, grabs something from within his suit jacket’s pocket and a thin bundle of purchased flowers—he knows Michelle dislikes them but can’t think of a a substitute with the one-track mindset he’s had for weeks—hurriedly checks they're still inside his briefcase, and finally gives soft two raps on the door at the exact moment the new assistant moves past him and turns the knob for him.</p>
<p>“She’s free to see you,” she gives with a mutter and sigh, his worrying bothering her.</p>
<p>Peter whispers a "Thanks." Peeks his head inside.</p>
<p>Michelle is gazing out the window from a lounge chair. When Peter announces his presence with a soft “Um, hey,” she stands to her feet, startled.</p>
<p>He immediately has to start shushing her announcements of shock and accusations. “Wait! Wait! Just listen first! I know I’m not supposed to be here—just listen first! <em>Shhh</em>, Michelle, <em>wait</em>—please?”</p>
<p>She’s stubborn but she allows it.</p>
<p>To himself, Peter notices how slightly haggard she looks and the bags under her puffy eyes. Choosing to ignore it for the task at hand, Peter softly closes the door and takes the few heart-racing strides to her.</p>
<p>He begins with an apology: he acknowledges that he'd been an idiot, "for so long, for far too long." Not for the first time, Peter admits that he hadn’t been the best person he could have been—he hadn’t been completely there when she needed him, that he hadn’t put her as the priority when needed, except when her life was momentarily in danger.</p>
<p>Peter grows raw as he admits he hadn’t been the best lover he could have been and let <em> the other guy’s duties </em> govern a lot of where he had been and when, and govern when he was available to her even when their relationship became official yet still secret. Peter reveals how much the regret ate him up inside ever since things hit the fan, since she found out herself about his old alter ego, and ever since she left him; ever since she spoke with him at the restaurant, she'd been stuck in Peter's mind even more. He reveals how the guilt of lying tears him up inside and he wishes he hadn’t let his fear stop him from telling her the truth about his double life, about working with a masked thief nicknamed Cat, about always second-guessing his actions and feelings because he <em> thought </em> it was putting her safety in good probability.</p>
<p>And then he speaks on the raging guilt felt when turning his back on her when he abruptly left at the restaurant and that it still haunts him. He tells that he’s been an idiot, “One big, giant, humongous idiot.”</p>
<p>He tells that he would give his life for her and her child—even though he remembers being told not to worry over it being considered mandatory—and proclaims he will be as involved as she will allow him to be.</p>
<p>Then when he slides down to one knee, her breath catches.</p>
<p>His throat start to strain and his words are wet and shaking. He apologizes, says repeatedly “I’m sorry. I’m <em> so, so sorry </em> Michelle." He swallows, anxiety brimming with his heart dangling on an unravelling shirt sleeve string. "I understand why you’re unhappy and I understand that you said you never wanted to see me again. I broke your heart and I broke your trust, and that may be something I’ll never get back. But I have to make sure you know that I always have and still do love you. Wholey, completely. I couldn’t let you go without you knowing this. I love you so much, so unbelievably much!”</p>
<p>Peter takes her hand from gripping the side of her skirt, uncurls her fist with surprising ease, gives it a light squeeze.</p>
<p>Breaking eye contact, his head lowers, positioning the back of her palm hovering his forehead. Gives a wet whisper: “Could you ever forgive me?”</p>
<p><em> You are my number one priority</em>, he’s saying. <em> Will you take me back? </em></p>
<p>The velvet box holding his aunt’s wedding ring rests heavily in his pocket, pressing against his thigh. Peter catches himself before a sob comes out feeling her hand pull from his to cart through his hair.</p>
<p>While debating whether to follow with another action—to take her hand again, to kiss, or to propose, having brought the ring as a <em> just in case things plan out</em>—Michelle mutters, “Stand up, Peter.”</p>
<p>And like the guilty man he is, he does as he’s told but keeps his gaze at an appropriately lowered level, praying that his eyelids and nose are not as blushed as they feel.</p>
<p>And likewise, there’s a lot of things Michelle wants to say—that she thanks him for telling her this, that she apologizes for pushing him away so drastically and suddenly and near permanently; that she isn’t sure if she <em> ready </em> to take him back or if she <em> should</em>. That’s what she <em> wants </em> to say but all possible outcomes get stuck in her throat.</p>
<p>She instead ends up blurting out, “There is no baby.”</p>
<p>Peter’s confusion is met by pink quickly tinting the ends of her nose and her throat swelling from emotion.</p>
<p>“What do you mean—”</p>
<p>She crosses her arms, shrugs, pitifully and <em>failing</em> at speaking it nonchalant. “There’s no—none.”</p>
<p>His brows pulls together. “What…what happened? Did you have—did something—what happened to it?”</p>
<p>Her sob couldn’t be held back. “There’s no baby—anymore.” She pauses to gather her words, considers the importance of her words, blurts them out anyway. “There was an accident with that <em>Scorpion</em> who attacked and he… I almost… And then all the <em>stress</em>…” She bites her lip, shakes her head, crossed arms tightening around her chest. Stares off to the side and <em>anywhere</em> but Peter's large, expressive, <em>concerned</em> eyes.</p>
<p>It takes several moments for Peter to gather what she means, to put a finger on her current presentation with an arm wrapped around herself, and what the sob was toward. When it hits, his mood shown on his face plummets even further. “Oh, ‘Chelle…”</p>
<p>She holds herself and shrugs again despite tears clearly gathering in her eyes. “It’s fine, I guess—it just wasn’t meant to be.” She looks to the carpet far and off to the side, purposely ignoring Peter’s worried stare. “It fits, you know—what they’re likely saying. ‘It’s no surprise, her eggs were already frozen for years.’ ‘How can an evil CEO have this when she’s taking from all other people. That’s karma for you.’ ‘It probably fits because she can never find anything in her schedule except her wor—’” That’s when the tears came out full force.</p>
<p>Part of Peter’s confusion comes from knowing that employee satisfaction greatly increased once Michelle increased wages through redistributions of her inherited wealth, that she regularly donates large sums to multiple charities and medical research. She's doing her best to use her powers for good like she spoke about since high school. Even during financial insecurity at the hight of the scandal, she took what she would earn and redistributed it as evenly as she found to every employee, though it ended up not being a lot. Perhaps, Peter thinks, not every employee is aware of these.</p>
<p>The other, larger source of his confused reaction—when he envelops her shaking form in his arms—is realizing that this was recent and that she’s been dealing with it all on her own.</p>
<p>She crushes herself against him. Her stomach no longer has a small, firm bump.</p>
<p>They drop to sit back on the lounge chair, her body still racking in loud, violent sobbing. Her face drenches his shoulder, hands clinging to the back of his suit’s jacket. With his chin resting on her head, Peter closes his eyes, regretting leaving her even more, as a hand rubs her back.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <b>was this too sad?</b>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Peter visits Michelle; she's the most raw and drunk she's ever been</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <b>Chapter prompt: ceo prompt: How Peter and Michelle handle losing the baby together as whatever they define themselves in that moment, a couple? co-workers? exes?</b>
</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <i>this chapter is entirely about heavy situations: it contains alcoholism and a discussion about miscarriage. this story is rated M for Mature so if you can't handle reading fictional depictions of mature content, idk what to tell you sorry.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I made this extra long for one reasons: because i didn’t know when to stop it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>after this chapter, I will be taking a hiatus from writing spideychelle</i>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jasmine calls in the middle of a staff meeting on a Thursday morning. Her voicemail is a second past two minutes in length, worry clouding her tone.</p><p>“She won’t answer my calls,” she tells when Peter has the time to call back. “She hasn’t arrived back at work since you visited.”</p><p>And that had been over a week ago—the timing in-between then and now not at the cause of Peter’s own choices, but like Jasmine’s inability to get in contact with her boss, because he was prevented from visiting again by both Michelle avoiding his phone calls and him being threatened by the front desk manager at Cedill Enterprise, ordering Peter to stay away or be dealt with security.</p><p>“I’m worried,” Jasmine admits, resting her forehead in a palm. It’s barely 10 AM and she’s already wired with caffeine. The gold rings on her hand glint in the light as she messages her forehead, accidentally messing up her smoothened gelled baby hairs. “At first I figured it was because she was recovering or was having another ‘me day,’ but now…” She sighs. “I need you go over and check on her?”</p><p>“I don’t understand why you would think to ask me. I can’t do anything if she wants to be alone.” He bites his lip, biding for time in the subway station. He then remembers, “Doesn’t she have a new personal assistant?”</p><p>Peter remembers that some of the responsibilities that came along with the occupation was to be Ms. Watson's personal assistant in more ways than one: per job details, the CEO's personal assistant is to be ready to visit her at any location, even at home, and to discuss work or run errands when she’s busy. After trust is established, a key to her home is earned. But Peter's a little unsure about <em>this new assistant</em>, remembering how much younger the woman appeared to be.</p><p>The other reason Peter deflects Jasmine’s worry is fueled by his own emotions of inadequacy and low self-surety.</p><p>“Yes, she does," Jasmine answers. "But that isn’t the point. You two were close; she gave you a key to her place. And I misplaced mine.”</p><p>Peter clears his throat. “We <em>were</em> close. But we haven’t talked since that afternoon and I don’t think she’d really want to see—”</p><p>“I know you two were together,” Jasmine cuts him off, and Peter’s tongue sticks, gets stuck in his throat, gets swallowed and his words collide in a traffic jam in the back of his throat. “And I know why she had been crying when you arrived.”</p><p>The screech of the subway brakes sound over the phone. Peter’s forgotten how to move until his shoulder is bumped by an impatient passenger rushing forward to board.</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“I’m nosey. Sue me. And you two were as loud and <em>obvious</em> as a blind man stepping on box-air-poppers. That…<em>and</em> she told me.”</p><p>Peter fiddles with the buttons on his shirt, feeling his ears blushing and like everyone in the subway car can overhear about his secret ex-relationship.</p><p>“She doesn’t want to see me,” she admits, the most disappointed he’s ever heard her. “But I think seeing you would be the best thing for her right now.”</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Peter Parker steps inside Michelle’s sixth floor condo home later that afternoon after dropping his belongings off at home, changing from his work attire, and is feeling intrusive as he enters. He expects to see evidence that she’s packed a bag and spontaneously left to an unknown getaway location.</p><p>Remembering her mood the last time he saw her, Peter tries to not think about the worst possible scenarios—he doesn’t think he could handle any of the ones that come to mind, and so he distracts himself by mumbling plans around the “what-if” outcome that Michelle is home and she still truly doesn’t want to see him.</p><p>Quietly closing the front door behind him, Peter cautiously walls forward and  peers around the first corner. “Michelle?” he calls out loud, alerting his presence. “Jasmine told me to come over.”</p><p>The A/C clicking on is all that answers him.</p><p>As he journeys further, he sees what her condo has been subject to in absence to her work: the kitchen has been in full use; dishes pile in the sink and on the surrounding counter space. Takeout containers fill her trashcan; empty bottles of various alcohols, juices, and mixers are in a little barricade formation on the floor around the trashcan and on the raised bar counter—the amount raises concern and Peter's heartbeat. A bra lies across the back of a kitchen chair. A half-empty glass of forgotten juice sits beneath the microwave.</p><p>The condo home feels more foreign than familiar—this mostly due to the rising suspicion that something isn’t <em>right</em>, like it’s shouting in his ear at top volume. He continues talking more for his comfort than to alert Michelle.</p><p>“Are you here?” Then Peter calls out her name a little louder. “Judging by Jasmine's phone call, there’s…something happened that makes her think you don’t want to see her.”</p><p>The home is eerily silent. Receiving no answer to his calls, his heart begins racing and pounding in his ears. The tiny hairs on his neck and arms rise as he slowly, carefully walks toward the dining area and then rounding the corner to the living room.</p><p>“Could you reply? With, like, a grunt? Or a noise? Or something would be greatly…greatly <em>nice</em> right now.”</p><p>The worst possible thoughts are pulled to the forefront of his mind. He’s forgotten how to breathe when his senses skyrocket once coming to the corner opening to the living room. When he enters, he has to brace himself with the wall, her name falling out in a whisper. It hangs in the air like a question. Worry surrounds like a cloud of smoke; it’s suffocating, constricting his throat, his thinking, his limbs for several moments.</p><p>She’s lying out on a long footstool, her ankles sideways on the floor, and facing the wide windows at the far side of the room. A tall vodka bottle that is one-thirds empty sits on the carpet  floor beside the stool’s leg. She isn’t moving so Peter flies into a panic: calling for her past the lump forming in his throat, hurrying to her side but afraid to touch at first, so he calls her name again. His senses dialed to the highest, a hand sticks to her house robe as he grips her shoulder, roughly nudging her, and only then does she stir and he registers a heartbeat.</p><p>She’d been asleep—and rolls her shoulder for his hand to remove, which he does after several relieved sighs.</p><p>There are dried salt tracks curving down her cheeks towards the cushions; her eyes flutter and blink, swollen, exhausted, and dreary. She doesn’t speak when asked how long she’d been at home and continues gazing outside, her back facing him. She’s told that it’s long after noontime. Then she’s told that her COO has been trying to get in contact with her and is very worried. Peter doesn’t think asking "Are you okay?" is in favor right now—and he voices this out loud—so he instead asks how long she has been at home, noting her dishes.</p><p>He doesn’t get a reply, and then he doesn’t think she’d even been listening.</p><p>But his phone soon pings with a text message: “Go away,” it reads. She had sent it.</p><p>Peter stands with his phone in hand, staring at her, not sure what to say.</p><p>“Jasmine is worried about you. Lots of people are worried about you. They say you haven’t shown to work in days. They don’t know what to think.” Spoken lower, he adds, “<em>I’m </em>worried…”</p><p>The only movement from her is the steady rising and fall as she breaths.</p><p>“C’mon, MJ. How long were you lying here?”</p><p>“Away,” she texts.</p><p>“What have you been doing?”</p><p>She doesn’t respond.</p><p>“If it’s true you’ve been here for almost two weeks already, you can’t keep staying here—not like this. It isn’t good…not really healthy either. You need to <em>talk</em> to someone…even if you’re still mad at me.”</p><p>Michelle lies quietly, not moving still.</p><p>“I know you’re mad at me about the key and I know I said I didn’t have it…but Jasmine said she lost hers…”</p><p>She sneezes, sniffs.</p><p>Then there’s tapping from her direction. Another text message appears on his phone’s screen: “Leave me alone. And you’re being way too loud.”</p><p>Giving a sigh, Peter leaves her momentarily to survey the rest of her home. He sees that her bedroom has hints of a mess similar to her kitchen: her bed is unmade; a separate blanket and pillow and a tissue box is set up beneath her window on the floor. Empty drinking glasses sit on her bedside table and desk, three half-drunken bottles of liquor and Hennessy sit on her tall dresser alongside eaten-on dishes. Her clothes hamper is overflowing. Two empty boxes of face tissues sit in her waste basket. Three pairs of shirts and non-denim pants drape over the back of her desk chair and lounge chair.</p><p>Her bathroom is the cleanest room in her home, save for the three bottles of medication on the counter. Shaking them, two are nearly empty. One bottle is for sleeping, one for alleviating pain, and another prescribed for PTSD, according to the labels. Peter holds them a little too long, inwardly debating to take some himself as the fingers of his free hand run around the ridges of the safety screw-on top. He ends up returning them all to the countertop, unopened.</p><p>A hand runs down his face as Peter looks back to her large bedroom one last time as he exits. He pauses before leaving. Partially hidden beneath a bed pillow, he notices a black-and-white photo.</p><p>Carefully stepping back inside, Peter feels like he’s entering inside a sacred space, like he’s intruding, and not like this was the room he’d spent countless days and nights in, as if he hadn’t laid in this same bed before.</p><p>His hands turn to ice as he pushes aside the comforter and then the pillow to get a better look. The ultrasound photographs are more weighted than flimsy in his hand; it’s like picking up a brick rather than two pieces of photo paper as the lump returns to Peter’s throat with alarming speed.</p><p>There are two of them, he finds, and reads the small text printed on each photograph. Michelle had gone alone, he remembers. She had been in her second trimester, the printed text reads. It had been a boy. She was going to name it either Benjamin or Joaquin, reads her handwritten scrawl inside the white margins.</p><p>Peter suspects she’d been sleeping with the photographs.</p><p>He feels even more terrible and regrets leaving her all over again. He feels that if he should have been more adamant about staying together instead of going along with her wishes, and his lack of action feels to be following him around and slapping the effects of his mistakes in his face.</p><p>He swallows thickly, placing the photos back.</p><p>Returning to the living room, Michelle hasn’t moved but the bottle has—from sitting on the floor behind her back to now on the floor in front of her. She smells strongly of sweet fruit and the acidic tang of alcohol.</p><p>He doesn’t get too close. At a comfortable distance but still facing her back, Peter calls for her once more—delicately, desperately, like if he doesn’t handle her name with care it will break, <em>she</em> will break.</p><p>“Can you…<em>will</em> you look at me? Please?” He pauses. “I just want to help. I promise. I don’t want—I don’t want you…I don’t want anything else.”</p><p><em>“Do you really think you should be alone right now?” </em>He thinks back to what he said when they last talked during that afternoon when she bawled onto his shoulder, when he slipped past the security guards and the uptight front desk manager to pay her what was expected to be his last visit ever.</p><p><em>“I have to be,” </em>she had answered then.<em> “That’s how you get over things. Especially a break up.”</em></p><p>In her condo, Peter’s shoulders fall further.</p><p>His phone pings at an incoming text message. “I just want to be left alone,” she sent.</p><p>Back then in her office, Peter had been concentrated on playing with Michelle's fingers. <em>“I shouldn’t have left,”</em> tumbled out. He had to clear his throat before continuing. <em>“I should’ve…I should’ve put my foot down and…done something. Done better.”</em></p><p>But Michelle shook her head in response to him then. <em>“No. You should have left. You needed to. We both needed you to.”</em> She already anticipated his expression of shock and dismay. <em>“We can’t—”</em> She stopped herself, backtracking.<em> “We need to be separated. We need space. We needed time,”</em> she clarified, her face now wiped dry of tears before their conversation. And, she’s already expecting his countering <em>“But ‘Chelle”</em> and the hurt look he wore.</p><p>Peter's visibly concerned as he had tried to persuade her otherwise. <em>“After this…? B-but I thought we should at least—”</em></p><p><em>“We aren’t together any more, Peter,”</em> she reminded him back then and it hurt her more to say it while in a vulnerable state. But Michelle has never been a quitter, has never been one to go back on her promises or her word. And in her office she’s trying to keep that exact promise to herself that she’s to get better and heal over their break up alone, no matter what it took. So she doesn’t need him, she never had, and she’s convincing herself she’s right. <em>“This doesn’t change that. It can’t.”</em></p><p>Now in the present and in her living room, Peter considers leaving her like requested but stops himself, stops that track of thinking and remains instead. He slides his phone into his pocket. The ringer goes off again at a phone call from Jasmine. He puts its volume on silent, not answering it.</p><p>Back in Michelle's office those days ago, that close contact had been the last shared since breaking up. And when Mark Raxton—her new overseer of the companies finances—flung the door open, grossly interrupting their sensitive session, Michelle masked her pain expertly despite having swollen eyes while Peter inwardly crumbled. Since then, she and Peter indeed healed and moved on a little, but there is still a tiny part glowing like a candle in the darkness, alight with some kind of minuscule hope that some miracle would come about and they can both work out their individual problems, and by extension their relationship, in time.</p><p>Part of Peter wonders if a second chance between them is even a realistic hope or if it is reachable.</p><p>It is also a lie that much healing has been made over this.</p><p>Minutes tick by as he thinks of many things at once: the many possibilities, obverses the woman in front of him, and his surroundings.</p><p>Once, Michelle rears up on an elbow to drink gulps of alcohol, then lies back down across the long footstool. The bottle sits dangerously uncorked on the carpet.</p><p>Peter slides his hands into his pockets, feeling utterly useless and devastated.</p><p>On the shelves of her skinny television entertainment center sits framed photographs of family and friends. One missing, he notices, and it's the one he’d taken of them during the height of their relationship. To match, there is one frame turned face-down on a shelf—his aforementioned photograph.</p><p>Wrappers of chocolate and other sweets decorate the floor near the foots of furniture and on the coffee table surface.</p><p>He wraps a hand around the back of his neck. When hearing her sniff and breathing grow heavy as she begins crying, his hand covers his mouth.</p><p>Flash-backing to just over a month ago, Peter  remembers what he told May. And here he is watching the woman he’s fallen in love with, hurting, and there’s nothing he can do about it.</p><p>Michelle's cellphone falls to the floor as she reaches for the alcohol again. She doesn’t move to retrieve her phone so Peter does instead. On its screen is a Twitter feed of a hashtag about horrible bosses. One that catches his eye is a demeaning tweet about female CEOs being succubi, that they selling their souls and should never be allowed to spawn another generation. In internet windows are Wikipages and how-to’s about planting, cocktail concoctions, and how many drinks the body can handle per day. He opens her texting app to see who were the last people to receive messages and is relieved to see the contact of a therapist at the top—unfortunately that was seventeen days ago—followed by Jasmine’s which was two days ago. Another app that’s open is for food delivery—and the doorbell rings at the exact moment.</p><p>It’s a delivery girl dropping off a medium order of pasta and garlic knots. Peter pays for it, telling that "Michelle Watson can’t come to the door right now" and gives a thirty dollar tip.</p><p>Checking his phone before returning to the living room, Peter replies to Jasmine’s missed text. He becomes so preoccupied by his phone while going to place the takeout boxes on her coffee table that he jumps in surprise when she croaks an incomprehensible mumble. He then changes destinations and goes to put the food in the refrigerator instead and sees it’s already full to the brim with uneaten and half-finished containers of ordered food.</p><p>Glancing cautiously back towards the living room, Peter doesn’t expect to see Michelle stretch, take another swig from her bottle, and proceed to stand—or try to stand—loosing her balance immediately and stumbling violently, catching herself with the arm of a nearby sofa chair. Alcohol splashes, staining the carpet and edge of the sofa cushion with its smell; Peter’s nose wrinkles at this only after he sprinted and grabbed her elbow before she (barely) caught herself.</p><p>Her eyes squint and she frowns in her drunken haze. Michelle slurs in annoyance that Peter just barely deciphers—something along the lines of “You were supposed to leave” or “I told you to leave.” She roughy half-shoulders him away, half-pushes him with weak resolve and shuffles off to her bedroom, muttering something about being tired.</p><p>Her hair’s bun is a wild bed-head and her face is entirely bare. Peter doesn’t know if she’s wearing clothes beneath her house robe and doesn’t think he should ask. She reeks of alcohol and he’s worried about how much she’s drunken.</p><p>“I don’t wanna see…” is all he can make out. “You need to leave.”</p><p>Shuffling the takeout bag to hold in one hand, Peter reaches for her glass bottle. “How much have you had to drink?” he questions but gets a scowl and smack on the arm in response. He’s told to leave—he thinks she says.</p><p>“I’m not leaving.” He grabs her elbow with his free hand and she’s looking back at him, now squinting in confusion.</p><p>She pouts, nearly whining her disappointment.</p><p>Still grabbing her elbow, Peter makes her sit on the nearest sofa. And as quickly as he can, retrieves a glass of tap water, gingerly exchanging it for her vodka bottle.</p><p>“I just wanna be left alone,” comes out in a defeated, heavily slurring whisper.</p><p>“I can’t let you be alone right now.” His chest tightens despite her barely faltering, emotionless face.</p><p>“Please?” comes even fainter. Her eyes blink slowly, bleary, and the plea cracks in her throat.</p><p>Peter reaches forward to help tilt the glass of wate to her lips. She grimaces like a child, pulling away.</p><p>Peter keeps the glass close and asks her to “Drink a little bit. You have to get something in you to sober up.”</p><p>Her stomach growls loudly. And still like a child, she refuses, stating that she can’t, she can’t, she just can’t. Her stomach growls again. She would rather not be sober. She can’t be sober.</p><p>Defeated, Peter allows her to chug the last swallows of her alcohol and sets the water on the coffee table. He’s taken a seat on the footstool now, pulling it to her spot on the couch, sitting in front of her. “Then eat something,” is requested with a small bit of noodles twirled around a plastic fork in front her face.</p><p>Instead of taking it, Michelle just stares tiredly at the fork, shifts to a focus point beyond his hand which he could not see. All this while, she’s barely shown emotion, and it startles him, frightens him. Peter’s scared to call her back to this plane where he and the rest of the world reside. He has no idea how intoxicated she must be, but it’s enough for it to have lasted for days and to make her speech barely distinguishable.</p><p>“Michelle…will you try talking to me?” he pleads.</p><p>A few beats of silence pass. “…You…leave,” are the words he understands around her slurring—she wants him to leave.</p><p>Heartbroken, Peter accepts he isn’t going to get his desired answer. He inserts the fork back into her line of sight instead of acting on her request.</p><p>She blinks slowly. He asks for just one bite. At this, she finally accepts.</p><p>Michelle is asked when was the last time she’s eaten a meal to which she doesn’t respond, continuing to stare forward and out the windows. Impossible to not breathe in her intoxicated atmosphere, he asks if she had been trying to drink herself silly; at this, her eyes blinked to stare at him. She mumbles about something hurting.</p><p>He’s twirling another bite of noodles around the fork. “I know it’s hard. It’s…very hard. It does hurt. But you gotta pull through. You’ve been through so much already. This pain isn’t going to last forever, MJ, and you’ll be able to—”</p><p>“Don’t act like you understand,” she speaks slowly, doing her best to annunciating enough to wipe away his encouraging grin. Her stare is more disdain than emotionless now. “You can’t ever understand.”</p><p>Peter’s confused and nervous, so in her drunken stupor, a non-sober Michelle is a brutally, painfully honest Michelle.</p><p>“It didn’t hurt you. You weren’t even there. It wasn’t you who was…it wasn’t your body…it wasn’t your fault.” Her face strews up and he thinks she rebukes him with words but Peter isn’t sure.</p><p>Speechless at first, Peter can only nod and accept her words. And she’s mumbling about it hurting, it hurting so bad, and is holding a hand to her chest and abdomen.</p><p>She doesn’t eat any more, just curls onto her side and falls back asleep clutching onto the empty bottle as more tears slide down her face and blubbering about a baby while Peter’s heart breaks.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When Michelle awakes, it’s four hours later, she’s in her bed, and a little more sober. In routined panic, her fingers search beneath her pillow until brushing across pieces of sleek paper, and then she lets out a breath of relief she doesn’t realize she held.</p><p>After she gets out of bed, swaying on her feet, she makes her way to the bathroom and jumps a little more awake at the sound of clatter coming from the living room. After chasing down two pills with leftover alcohol sitting atop her dresser, Michelle leans against her bedroom's doorframe to watch Peter in her kitchen; he's busied and in a wife beater tank top, finishing washing her piles of dishes.</p><p>Squinting against the dying sun glaring through her wide windows, her condo is significantly cleaner: the litter on the floors and table tops is picked up, the trash taken out, and the counters and tabletops are clear. The appliances in the kitchen appeared to have been polished and the floors too.</p><p>Michelle stumbles forward and accidentally knocks the broom resting against the doorframe. Not the least bit startled, Peter calls that he’ll get it, dries his hands on a kitchen towel, and sprints in time to help steady her balance before retrieving the broom. And Michelle’s more caught off guard than she’s shocked when he effortlessly sweeps her off her feet to ask how sober she feels. She doesn’t reply so he instead asks if she’s either hungry or needs more rest. Her head falls to his shoulder and she suddenly feels lightheaded.</p><p>Her washer and dryer are working a load each, her ears pick up.</p><p>The takeout of noodles from earlier is rewarmed in the microwave after she’s seated at her small kitchen table. Peter informs that he’ll make sure she gets some food in her and then help her to get cleaned up.</p><p>Three bites into her first meal of the day, Michelle finally voices what’s been buzzing in her dizzy mind: “You’re still here.”</p><p>He nods. Twirls more noodles around the forks for her to take—a nice back and forth of his preparing the food on the fork and she feeding herself. He sits in the chair stationed to her right at the four-cornered table.</p><p>“Jasmine told me," he shares—why he is here in the first place. "I told you that earlier already but I don’t know how much you remember.”</p><p>She doesn’t remember much, she tells. “So you’re only here for Jasmine?” Her words still have a slur to them from days of drinking.</p><p>His eyes snap to her. “No.” Frowns. “No, I’m not. Of course not.”</p><p>Michelle's gaze turns back to her food.</p><p>She doesn’t remember the last time she ate an actual meal—was it days ago? A week? Longer? She remembers chips, french fries and onion rings, Goldfish crackers and candy. She remember nibbling on ordered food but nothing more than a few bites.</p><p>Having something solid and a full portion on her stomach is already rejuvenating her strength and helping to clear her head.</p><p>“Do you believe me?”</p><p>“Of course.” She nods.</p><p>But it feels like she’s mocking him, and so Peter frowns again. Changing the topic, he shares what he’s done to tidy up while she slept.</p><p>“I appreciate the effort but…you didn’t have to—to do all this.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“And you don’t have to stay. Tell Jasmine everything is all fine and I’ll be back at work tomorrow. On second thought, I’ll text her.”</p><p>“She said that’s what you told her a week ago. She’s tried to get in contact with you since then but it hasn’t worked.” Standing to take the step needed to be in arm's reach, he pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. He asks how sober she thinks she is right now.</p><p>“I feel sober. Totally sober.” It’s a lie. “You can leave now…whenever you’re ready to.”</p><p>“Why do you want me out so badly?” He’s met with her blank stare, almost a glare. He adds, “You kept saying that earlier when you were more drunk—that you wanted me to leave you alone.”</p><p>“It’s,” she pierces her noodles with the fork, dragging it through a puddle of sauce. “That’s because I do. You…have to leave.”</p><p>Feeling the starting fires of an argument but not able to back down, Peter doesn't think he has an alternative option so he feeds into it by asking why does he have to leave.</p><p>“Because you have too. You just have to.”</p><p>But leaving is what started all this in the first place, he defends.</p><p>“You just have to—I can't—I just can’t. This is too much.”</p><p>“What’s too much?”</p><p>"You have to leave."</p><p>"That's not answering the question."</p><p>“I can’t do this.” Her fork has fallen. Her palms press to her eyes, shoulders hunching.</p><p>What part of him being here is too much, Peter asks. He came here to help her; all he wants to do is help.</p><p>But Michelle has begun retreating into herself, and quietly repeats, “Please leave.”</p><p>What has he done, Peter asks. With a pleading look he asks for her to allow him to help.</p><p>She's leaned over her knees now, meal and conversation before completely forgotten. “I just want to be alone...”</p><p>"But you're not alone," he tries to soothe. He repeats that he's only here to help her and he tries to be encouraging as he tells that she’s stuck with him because he’s staying and he’s going to help and there’s nothing she can do about it because—</p><p>Peter doesn’t get to declare that he loves her—truly and wholeheartedly.</p><p>Michelle hears too many “I want, I want, I want’s” and “you should, you need, you can’t’s” and her hangover and perception crisscrosses and something behind her eyes <em>snaps</em>, and she calls him <em>Daniel</em>.</p><p>“<em>This isn’t about you, Daniel!!</em>”</p><p>Peter blinks, her shout hushing him up. “Who’s Daniel?”</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>In embarrassment and regret, Michelle tries to get off-her-feet drunk again but Peter doesn’t let her. She bolts (to the best of her ability) for the remaining alcohol in her pantry and he forcefully takes each bottle she grabs. He threatens to pour them all down the sink if she touches another one for the rest of the day. She glares at him, hating him, and threatens him.</p><p>"I don't work under you anymore; you can't threaten me."</p><p>"Get out!" She yells.</p><p>The tension and anger echoes the fight they had that started this whole strain.</p><p>Michelle grips the counter for balance. "I want to just be..."</p><p>"You can't even stand up straight." And then Peter finally does what he'd been beating himself up about and he says, "No. I'm not leaving until you explain why you don't want me here. You can't eat, you've been sleeping all day, you take—"</p><p>"It's because we broke up!" Her house robe loosens and the collar opens a bit as she throws her arms out to her sides, a gesture that says it's the obvious answer.</p><p>"I'm not here as your boyfriend." Peter's teeth clench. "I'm here because I'm <em>worried</em> about you."</p><p>Michelle leans over the counter and hangs her head, breathes, takes in a shaky breath mixed with a sob, and finally decides to listen.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The sun is setting. The blinds are pulls open to provide a view of the city as the lights slowly brighten the night.</p><p>It's an hour later. They’re tipped back in her electric lounge sofa watching the sunset backdrop against the city line when she speaks again, breaking the hour-long silence.</p><p>“He was a guy I dated—Daniel,” she starts. “He was a jerk...surprisingly selfish and manipulating. I didn’t realize how manipulating until I wanted to break up with him...”</p><p>She speaks of the distant memory like a daydream. Her words aren’t slurring as much as before but Peter can tell she’s still not completely sober.</p><p>“It was years ago and there was a similar incident...similar things were said. We…” She thinks about her word choice. “I loved him and I thought he loved me. But he…saw it all more as an automatic…<em>obligation</em> that he wanted to use as a <em>dominating</em> thing, like, someone to <em>own</em>: I have his baby and he’ll never be away from us."</p><p>Michelle heaves a deep sigh s she forces the memories to resurface.</p><p>"I think he wanted to swoon me for money in the future, too, because I didn’t have this job yet when we met. …And then I found out he was cheating with a girl at the first-floor desk.” She tries to smile bitterly at the memory—her voice even sounds like she'd meant to—but the smile itself never shows.</p><p>The setting colors of the sky reflect softly on Michelle’s calm face. She’s either pulled into herself again or is unbothered by this storytelling, and as the soft pinks and oranges change to dark blue and purple and reflections of city lights on the window glass, Peter’s wary about asking for her to differentiate. It could break her concentration and train of thought.</p><p>None of this information she’s ever shared before.</p><p>“After finding out and confronting him about him cheating…but he made me feel…<em>guilty</em> for wanting to break up with him. Like <em>I</em> was in the wrong…and it <em>worked</em>. And then—and then I told him I couldn’t have a kid with him, he got so…” She pauses, looking back in time. Her face scrunches up in emotion, then falls and smoothens to calm again. “Bad. It was bad. I couldn’t go through with it. I wasn’t ready anyway.” Her eyes train on her wide living room windows. She still appears exhausted; the puffiness from her cries diminished with time.</p><p>A question hangs in the air but it isn’t asked; Peter just watches her, brows pulled together in concern and deep concentration.</p><p>But Michelle answers his burning question anyway: “This is my third miscarriage.”</p><p>There’s a beat where Peter inhales.</p><p>“I’ve my first pregnancy scare and an abortion before them.” She speaks slowly, recounting the memories in partial hazy detail. “The first scare was in college. Twenty-something, -two, I think. Hooked up with a guy who called me pretty and had nice handwriting. When I took a test some days later…downed a handful of Plan B pills and luckily stopped it in time.”</p><p>She pauses, her eyes searching, recounting the second incident. “Then there was a guy I met some years later who ended up liking me more for my face than for me and wanting an actual relationship. I…liked him, yeah, but I couldn’t raise a kid and knew that. Plus our relationship wasn’t even really a relationship. So I did what I had to do. I can’t say I regret it. But only two other people know about these things: Liz, an old friend of mine from, like high school; and someone I used to be friends with, Felicia. But it was mentioned to her as a side-detail; like, ‘yeah, I know about that because I went through it’ kinda thing came up.”</p><p>Peter’s concerned look has changed to his eyebrows nearly connecting if it wasn't for the deep wrinkle between them. Her hand closest to him glides over the seat cushion between them. He turns from looking at her to the outside, daring not interrupt but his mouth hangs a little open in bewilderment.</p><p>“Then I was ready to have my first kid when I was, like, twenty-six—I was with Daniel then—but I lost it. And after that another one happened with him when I was twenty-seven and we broke up. Lost them both from stress and other health issues.” She swallows a gulp of air. The hand gliding across the seat has stopped, balling into a fist. “Now I’m thirty-five and finally I thought I had a chance. Everything was great,” she speaks, daydream-like in a whisper. “Everything was <em>perfect</em>.”</p><p>Silence passes again. Public sprinklers turn on below. An airplane roars overhead.</p><p>“This sucks,” she groans. Slightly shakes her head. “I really thought…” Her throat tightens around her words. She swallows thickly, her words and hands beginning to shake. “But I <em>really wanted this one</em>…” She doesn’t move from leaned back in the chair but a few tears leak out the corners of her eyes.</p><p>From his seat cushion over, Peter isn’t sure whether she wants him to react physically or verbally. He isn’t sure whether she wants him to break her concentration. He isn’t sure she <em>wants</em> to be touched in this moment. From his spot on the wide lounge chair, he watches in pain as she squeezes her eyes shut.</p><p>“After this time…I was just going to see how long it took until I needed to get my stomach pumped. Drinking, I mean.” The fresh tear tracks on her face glisten in the moonlight. Tilting her head a little in his direction but still turnes toward the window, she tells, “I was going to name it Ben if we, somehow, got back together. If we could. Joaquin was another option.”</p><p>“I know,” slips, impulsively. But Peter’s already started so he may as well continue on. “I saw…I saw the pictures. Under your pillow, when I first came over and looked around.”</p><p>Michelle finally looks to him. In the moonlight, she doesn’t look as haggard and spent as he knows she feels. She looks to him with sorrow and longing, with hope, with a fragility that makes him think of crystal-ceramic that are given as heirlooms or auctioned off to millionaires. She looks at him with dreary eyes, strands of hair falling loose from a bun, and she’s full of inelegance and simplicity within this raw moment of dreamy memories blanketed by honesty and free of skepticism.</p><p>The night sky loudly rumbles with an impending rainstorm. Seeming immediately (because they're too lost in the moment) rain beats against the window blending together the colors of the night shining inside her living room.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When she makes it back to her bed, Michelle was able to guzzle down enough sangria to make her sway on her feet while Peter had gone to the bathroom. Ready to pass out from fatigue but not quite ready for him to go, she’s tipsy enough to show how disappointed and surprised she is when Peter announces that he’ll be back to check on her tomorrow.</p><p>But a hand wraps around his once he finishes tucking her in bed. “Stay,” she slightly slurs.</p><p>He tells that he can’t, that he can see the exhaustion in her eyes, that he will be back first thing he can tomorrow but she needs to sleep off her hangover.</p><p>But Michelle’s grip tightens, adds both hands to her useless struggle. “Please.”</p><p>“I can’t.” He inadvertently catches sight of the edges of the ultrasound photographs beneath thepillow beside her. With ease, he pries off her hands, runs a hand over her unkept hair and promises, “Tomorrow.”</p><p>Michelle doesn’t struggle further but her silence is deafening and Peter can feel her depressed gaze bore through his back as he turns to leave, each step feeling like he’s dragging along pounds of weight even after he’s exited her home and locked her front door.</p><p>Only when he’s a few steps down the hall does the gut wrenching feeling—guilt, regret—tear into his stomach at picking up the faint muffles of Michelle’s crying fit as she turns over in her bed and bawls into her pillow. In between the sobs he catches, just barely, her sobs about people “always leaving,” about “can never keep, never staying,” and repeated “why’s.”</p><p>Peter’s fingernails bite into his palms. He checks the time on his cellphone.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Due to the overwhelming emotion caused by grief and substance, she doesn’t completely register the sound of her front door over her crying, or hears the keys hitting the countertop, or shoes toed off and the softest creaking of floorboards.</p><p>Michelle’s crying ceases with a startled gasp at the blanket pulled back then Peter’s asking if she can slide over to make more room.</p><p>Doing so, she stares, unexpected, as he slides in under the blanket. For a long moment, she doesn’t speak, struggling to make out his outline in the barely lit room. When she finally speaks, it’s a dumfounded, choked, “You stayed?”</p><p>Finding her hands beneath the blankets, the back of his palms brush against the photographs between them.</p><p>“Mmhm,” he answers and adjusts to get comfortable, shifting his nose not far from hers.</p><p>A thumb runs over the backs of her hands and he repeats what he had said to her over a week ago while back in her office:</p><p>Michelle had spoken,<em> “We’re too messy to get back together,”</em> which she thought had been spoken too low for him to hear but remembered in a split-second that he hears extraordinarily well.</p><p>The reply to her comment had been hearing Peter’s speeding heart rate while her head had still been on his chest.</p><p><em>“Yeah,”</em> he’d spoken inanely. His chest tightened, his hope and heart fractured, but the couldn’t force himself to let go of her back then in her office <em>“Fine. We don’t—I didn’t come back here with the intention of getting you back.”</em> He still half-lied about his true feelings and winced, catching it too late.<em> “We don’t have to be anything…but it isn’t good for you to be by yourself. Not right now.”</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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  <i>a quick note: <b>Please Leave A Comment. I worked a hell of a lot on this chapter</b></i>
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  <i>1) first, I want to give an IMMENSE thank you to those loyal readers who have been leaving comments from the story. it is always such a joy reading your reactions and thoughts about my writing. it honestly fills me with such happiness to know that I have still been making content you've enjoyed since the start of this tag on ao3. but because of the time, I do need a break</i>
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  <i>2) like it is as said in the beginning notes, after this chapter I will be taking a hiatus from writing spideychelle but i will be working on other things</i>
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  <i>3) this largely due to having written for them for the past four years nonstop, and and the lack of response/communication between readers and writers. (such as the lack of reblogs on Tumblr, the many who do not leave comments on ao3. receiving no prompts for either au also plays into this as well.)</i>
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  <i>4) because I wrote continuously for them for years it puts my writing in danger. it feels like all my characterizations sound the same. also my other marvel stories works have not received acknowledgment or comments. and the combination of all of these factors is very hurtful, discouraging, and disappointing.</i>
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  <i>so, while I have enjoyed writing for spideychelle, with all of these factors taken in mind, a much needed break is needed. this has been the pda. if you have any questions or concerns, I would love to hear from you on my blog. I WILL BE BACK TO WRITING THEM! And please share your thoughts about this story and chapter. Comments are literally all that content creators ask for.</i>
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        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Leave a comment on ao3 if you like this! Since ao3 is no longer counting hits from logged-on readers, comments are extremely appreciated, even more during this time because it actually tells that people are reading this and liking this story.</p><p>Send a prompt to my Tumblr if you want to see more chapters (leaving comments is also motivation that will help get more chapters out)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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